Friday, November 09, 2007

Softly softly, catchee monkey

In a country where bombs explode at mosques and railway stations, bakeries and temples with depressing regularity (despite the Indian Anti Terrorist squad being one of the most experienced in the world at dealing with domestic terrorism), New Zealand’s entry into the War on Terrorism was totally ignored.

A bigger story this week in The Times of India was a piece about a city under siege from a growing internal threat that civic authorities admit is beyond their capabilities, even as the Deputy Mayor of the city of New Delhi is the latest fatality in a long list of deaths or horrific injuries attributed to the new Urban Terror.

The deputy Mayor fell to his death in a brave attempt to hold his home from invasion from the marauding terrorists of New Delhi, the same group known to be responsible for a savage attack on a two year old child that left her ear ripped off and half her cheek torn. They cause damage to property, attack women returning home with the ingredients for the evening meal, rob and pillage houses while the residents cower in abject terror and murder small children while they sleep.

But the Government is impotent to the very real threat to its citizens, “It is beyond our control, we have no one of any specialist training to deal with the growing menace.”

It is believed that this group has held training camps in the jungles that until recently were located a safe distance from the capital city. Now the terrorists are making incursions into the sprawling mass of Delhi’s economic and urban expansion with fatal results.

Where previously the citizens of the city could defend themselves with sticks and stones, and call the terrorists all sorts of nasty names (there is a religious and cultural imperative against killing monkeys in India but guerrillas are fair game), the terrorists remained impervious to civic threats and simply amped up their training in the jungles from whence they came until they now hold some parts of the city to ransom.

Or perhaps it is that the city has so far encroached on their land and traditional way of living that the monkeys have begun to practise ‘monkey see, monkey do’ in a direct reversal of earlier passive resistance techniques used to rid the Indian sub continent of another scourge sixty odd years ago.

The death of the Deputy Mayor has increased calls for the local Government to take action, but it seems that there is a shortage of people experienced in dealing with simian terrorism.

“We have placed advertisements in all the local dailies in areas of the South where monkey catchers traditionally come from but there are two problems. First, the monkey catchers are mostly illiterate and so can’t read the papers and then there is the problem of increasing urbanisation meaning that monkey catchers are sought after all over India. There is a shortage of monkey catchers and too many monkeys,” said one Government officer, who refused to be named for fear of reprisals.

I thought a letter to the editor might be helpful under the circumstances, cc’d to Helen Clarke.

“Sir

It is with great interest that I read of the recent terror raids on New Delhi committed by those self serving simians.Until recently we had a similar situation at home in Aotearoa, New Zealand and I couldn’t help but make comparisons.Our guerrillas live deep in the heart of the mountains where they mostly swing happily from hui to hui, hikoi to hikoi and are sometimes even seen shopping at the supermarket quiet brazenly as if they had every right to such essentials as food and water.

Once they reach the outskirts of the city they can be seen talking loudly in their own language, strutting down the street as if they used to own the very land where we now park our flash cars and wearing all sorts of weird tribal masks on their faces (which, like the burqa and the headscarf should also be banned in a civilised society). Their very presence seems to be designed to strike terror into the hearts of all our citizens who suffer from State sponsored historical amnesia and an underdeveloped sense of white guilt.

Thankfully though, our government (in an attempt to kiss American arse and improve our trade situation), recently organised a massive raid on the mountains and thoroughly trounced the simian threat in the first dawn raid outing of our Anti Terror Law enacted upon it’s own citizens.

During the raids, clothing and guns were seized, dancers and vegetarians and snail lovers were summarily charged with all sorts of criminal activities, trials were held in closed courts and all civic rights for these cheeky monkeys totally suspended.

Unfortunately for our Government and our overenthusiastic and underemployed Anti Terror Squad, the charges were subverted by the incoherent wording of our Anti Terror Act. It seems that the Act is as illiterate as your fullahs monkey catchers down South.

Since most of our country seemed to support the Anti Terror Squad in its recent actions against the Tuhoe Terribles, I am sure they would join with me in encouraging our government to arrange a peace keeping mission whereby we send our Anti Terror squad to rid the city of New Delhi of the very real simian scourge before these monkeys start wearing camouflage gear and talking about flying flambé banana into buildings.

The Indian economy is healthier and becoming rapidly wealthier than the US economy, and has a larger and growing consumer base in any case, and doesn’t seem to have a policy of bullying their trading partners, there could also be some beneficial trade spin offs from this kind of exchange between our two countries.

Meanwhile we have plenty of room in the Urewera for as many barrels of monkeys as India cares to send us.